


We Who Wander This Wasteland

by Duck_Life



Series: Never Talk To Me Or My Son Ever Again [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, Identity Issues, Mother-Son Relationship, Past Brainwashing, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-24 06:20:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6144349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn is slowly learning what it is to be a person while he regains the full use of his legs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Who Wander This Wasteland

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so the original version of this story was meant to be largely a Poe/Finn fic with a very minor bit with Kalonia (the Resistance doctor who tells Chewie "that sounds so scary, you must be sooo brave") at the beginning. Anyway, Poe's like barely in the finished product and Kalonia's a much more major player. Basically, she's to Finn what Leia is to Poe. And I thought it might be cool to have kind of a foil to Phasma.

Finn’s eyes snap open suddenly and he doesn’t know where he is, but he’s cold, and he’s afraid, and the last thing he remembers is the snow and the wind and Starkiller Base.

With a lump in his throat he asks, “Captain?” because of course she’s there, because she’s always there, because of course his brief freedom was a fluke.

“Major, actually,” a woman says to him, and he turns to see her perched on the opposite cot, her ankles crossed in front of her. She sniffs. “And don’t you forget it.”

He thinks he might recognize her from the Resistance base and that secures it, he’s still there, they brought him back and they took him in and he’s _safe_ , he’s away from the First Order. “I’m sorry,” he stumbles, trying to sit up. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m sorry.”

“At ease, bigshot,” she says. “And don’t call me ma’am. ‘Ma’am’ is my mother. You can call me Dr. Kalonia.”

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “Dr. Kalonia.”

“It’s okay, you didn’t do anything wrong,” she assures him. “Like I said, I’m Dr. Kalonia and I’ve been treating you, Finn. Do you remember what happened?”

Starkiller. The slash of the three-pronged lightsaber. Kylo Ren. _Kylo Ren is superior to all of us and we are grateful for his passionate leadership. If he says jump, you jump. If he says shoot, you shoot. If he says—_ “Yes, I remember,” Finn coughs, shaking his head a little. Every bit of him feels sore. “I was… my back.”

“Really did a number on it,” she says. “You’ve been in here for about three weeks now.” She’s got gray in her hair and a kind face. She reminds Finn of middle-aged mothers he’s seen in villages. His stomach lurches when he thinks about what happened to those middle-aged mothers. “We’re going to keep you here until tonight just to make sure you’re doing alright, and then we’ll move you into your own quarters. But, ah, you’ll still be reporting here for physical therapy, of course.”

 _No one will carry you if you cannot carry yourself. You are granted your will and your legs only by the grace of the First Order. If you are broken, FN-2187, there will be no fixing you, and you will be terminated._ “Okay,” Finn says, trying to shake old ghosts out of his head. “Physical therapy. Okay.”

“Nothing scary,” she promises. “We’ll start out with something easy.” As she stands, she places a hand on his shoulder and smirks. “Maybe I’ll teach you how to dance.”

Finn’s alone all day— he doesn’t know why, but guesses no one feels the need to visit him, which makes sense. They give him a tablet and he occupies himself by memorizing maps of the Resistance base. _If you don’t know your way around you will be left behind. You will be forgotten. You are inconsequential._

A nurse helps him to the bathroom at one point and he takes the opportunity to splash water on his face. He shudders, hands gripping the sides of the sink basin. He hears Phasma’s commanding voice in his head like an echo that never ends. He feels like he’s been running on adrenaline since escaping the First Order and now it’s all catching up with him, he’s sliding back into who he was. A puppet, a soldier. FN-2187.

“Finn,” he whispers, looking at himself in the scratched mirror. “Finn.”

The hours pass, sunlight fading from the one window in the medbay, and by nightfall Kalonia returns. “Ready to bust out of here, bigshot?” she asks, sinking onto the cot beside him. She holds out a tablet and stylus. “Just sign the dotted line and you’re free to go.”

Finn takes the tablet and scans the text on it. It all kind of blurs together— that he’s satisfied with his care, that he feels fit to leave. He doesn’t know what will happen if he refuses to sign and he doesn’t want to find out, so he writes his name quickly without thinking— and stares down at his hastily scrawled _FN-2187._

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says quickly, words tripping over themselves. “I didn’t mean to— that’s not my name. I— I’m Finn. I did it wrong. I’m sorry.”

“No worries,” she assures him, taking the tablet quickly and hitting _CLEAR RESPONSE_. She hands it back to him. “Happens more than you think. One time I had a patient try to tell me he was Jabba the Hutt.”

Carefully, carefully, Finn signs his name. He hesitates. “I— I don’t have a last name.”

“That’s okay,” Dr. Kalonia says. “If you want to use one, you can use mine until you pick your own.” And she spells it out for him.

As Finn heads for the door, he realizes there’s someone standing there. “Can I talk to him now?” Poe says, looking at Kalonia. “Can I _hug_ him? C’mon, Doc, you’re killin’ me.”

“Yes, yes, you can hug him,” she sighs irritably. “Just… don’t squeeze too hard, Dameron. He’s still breakable.”

“Hey, buddy,” Poe grins, and wraps his arms around Finn, who stands stock-still and a little confused before he cautiously returns the embrace. “Damn, it’s good to see you on your feet again.”

“It’s… good to _be_ on my feet again,” Finn says, smiling a little over Poe’s shoulder.

“They wouldn’t let me see you,” Poe explains, letting go of Finn. Immediately, Finn misses the contact. He feels cold. “Thought I might excite you too much, or some bullshit.”

“I can _hear_ you,” Kalonia calls. “Go on, shoo. I’ve got sick people to deal with.”

Poe leads him out of medbay and down the hall. “You’re in the room next to mine,” he explains, heading for the barracks. “So if you ever need anything, I’m right next door.”

“Okay,” Finn says, the effort of walking already tiring him out. Right now he needs a cane, and he leans between Poe and the walls. He gets to his brand new bunk and falls asleep for exactly eight hours. Just like always.

In the morning Finn doesn’t know where he is, or who he is, or how he got to be this person.

 _Person_. He hangs onto that word. It feels strange to think, feels like it doesn’t fit in his head. More comfortable and familiar are the words seared onto his mind, the lilting woman’s voice telling him _tool, thing, property, fodder_.

The room’s equipped with a minimal wardrobe, black and brown pants, white and orange shirts. Finn dresses quickly and tries not to think. Poe’s waiting outside his door and they go to breakfast together and they eat, and Finn tries not to think.

That day he has his first physical therapy session with Kalonia. Poe walks him there, grouching the whole time that he doesn’t get to come in with Finn. “It’s ridiculous,” he says. “Patient-doctor confidentiality or whatever. I just want to help.”

“Will I be able to find you after?” Finn says, crushing down the sense of anxiety in his voice, hoping Poe can’t hear it.

“Of course, buddy,” Poe promises. “I’ll probably be in the hangar working on my ship. You can come and find me there as soon as you’re done, okay?”

“Okay.” And then he’s gone.

_“Don’t help him up again, FN-2187. He can stand.” FN-2187 watches Slip— no, FN-2003— struggle to his feet after the Captain pushes him down. “Now,” the Captain tells him, “push him down. Teach him.”_

_FN-2187 hesitates, panics, but then he shoves FN-2003 to the floor._

“You gotta try to get up for me, bigshot,” Kalonia says, crouching from a distance and watching him. “I know it hurts, alright? I know it’s hard.”

“ _I can’t_.”

“You can,” she promises. “Look, I’m here to help you, but going easy on you isn’t going to help you.”

Finn digs his hands into the mat and presses upward, feeling his back protesting. He bends his knees, winces, and he hesitates. _Hesitation is weakness. Weakness is obsoleteness. Obsoleteness calls for termination_. Finn stands, thinking he might pass out from the pain.

“That was good,” Kalonia tells him, beaming. “Finn, that was really good.”

Lying awake at night, Finn thinks about names, and a memory simmers to the surface of his mind. He remembers a fellow soldier, a Stormtrooper, who’d given himself a name. A book had been passed around their quarters— illegally, of course. A love story from some planet they’d raided. One of the girls in the book was called Alice.

After a good number of them read the book, one of the troopers decided that he liked the name Alice and started asking the others to call him that.

When their superior officers found out, they made Alice stand in front of his whole squadron and say the name Alice over and over and over again, until hours stretched to days, and they never gave him a break. No one could leave. They had to stand there and listen, _Alice Alice Alice Alice Alice Alice Alice Alice Alice Alice Alice Alice Alice Alice Alice Alice Alice Alice_ , until it meant nothing. It was not a name. It was a noise.

Lying awake at night, Finn whispers to himself, _FN-2187 FN-2187 FN-2187 FN-2187 FN-2187 FN-2187 FN-2187 FN-2187 FN-2187 FN-2187 FN-2187 FN-2187 FN-2187 FN-2187 FN-2187_. He wants it to go away. He wants to forget. He wants to just be Finn and no one else.

He talks to Dr. Kalonia more than he talks to anyone else, even Poe, Poe who is so good and kind and doesn’t deserve to hear the twisted things in Finn’s head.

“I don’t understand,” he says one day, working his way across the floor. “I’m… I’m broken. I can’t help the Resistance with my back like this and valuable resources are being wasted on rehabilitating me.” He doesn’t know how to make his words sound more human. It’s what he feels. He doesn’t want to think about what that means.

“As flattered as I am that you think I’m a valuable resource,” Kalonia says, “that’s not how things work at the Resistance. Everyone matters. You’re a person, so you matter.”

When Finn falls to the floor, she thinks it’s his back. It’s only once she’s kneeling beside him and takes in the hyperventilation and glassy eyes that she realizes he’s having a panic attack.

 _You are not a person. You have never been a person. You will never be a person. You are nothing. Say it, FN-2187. Say it. Say what you are. Say what you never will be_.

Finn doesn’t realize that he’s following the ghosts of Phasma’s orders until he comes back to himself and notices Kalonia’s stricken expression. He hears his own voice like it’s a distant recording, “I am not a person. I have never been a person.” He snaps his mouth shut. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I don’t know… I don’t know why I…”

“May I touch you?” Kalonia asks, extending a hand. He nods, expecting her to bend him into yet another yoga pretzel that’s supposed to be good for his back. Instead, she just runs a soft hand through his hair and cups his face. She looks very, very sad. “You are a person, Finn,” she says. “Do you know, you remind me of a patient I once had. Little Twi’lek girl, cute as a button. We rescued her from… well, it doesn’t matter where we rescued her from. It was bad. She had been sold into slavery. And the man who… the man who enslaved her told her that she was nothing. Or, well, no, that she was a _thing_. An _it_. She just kept telling me the same thing.”

Finn breathes, in and out, in and out. “What happened to her?”

“She still struggles,” Kalonia says. “But she’s gotten better. It never goes away, Finn, but it does get better.”

Finn doesn’t want it to get better. He just wants it to go away. He wants all of it to just go away.

Dr. Kalonia pulls out a slip of paper and starts to write. “What are you doing?”

“I’m writing you a prescription,” she says, and hands him the slip of paper. “I want you to say the words written on that paper every night before you go sleep and every morning when you wake up. Can you do that for me?”

Finn nods mechanically. He doesn’t look at the paper until their session is over. It says, _People aren’t things. I am a person. My name is Finn. I matter._

Every day Finn tells himself that he matters, that he’s a person, and he goes to physical therapy and while he’s relearning to walk he talks, tells Kalonia about Alice and about Captain Phasma and about Slip. He tells her about conditioning and weapons training and how the troopers were forbidden from touching each other, and Kalonia for her part tries not to look too horrified. For some reason, it feels better this way, talking about his past instead of having it spring up on him.

“Thank you for listening,” Finn says at one point. “I can’t tell Poe about any of this.”

Kalonia helps him stretch out one leg, then the other. “Why not?”

Finn shrugs. “I just don’t want to burden him with this stuff,” he says. “I mean, he’s done so much for me, you know? He gave me a name. He gave me… _everything_. He shouldn’t have to hear about all of that.”

Kalonia stops stretching Finn’s legs and sits down on the floor, beckoning for him to join her. “Let’s talk for a second, bigshot.” Finn sits down on the floor beside her. “You know Poe didn’t give you _everything_ , right?”

“Oh,” Finn says, looking a little embarrassed. “I mean, no, I know. And I’m… I’m very grateful to you and to General Organa—”

“No, no, no, not what I meant,” Dr. Kalonia says, waving her hands for him to stop talking. “I mean… okay, what did you have before Poe?”

Finn thinks. “Nothing,” he says, feeling cold. “I _was_ nothing. I was with the First Order.”

“Now, that’s not true,” Kalonia says, her hands folded in front of her, her legs criss-crossed. “Before you ever met Poe, you were a very brave man. A very brave _person_ who _chose_ not to shoot anyone on Jakku. _You_ made the decision to leave the First Order, not Poe. And before you ever had a name you had a _soul_ , Finn, and you were a person, and you mattered. No one gave any of that to you, okay? You have always had that.”

Finn nods, trying to think. There’s so much in his head. He still feels Phasma’s shadow looming over him, orders he never followed, to shoot, to kill, to destroy.

Finn gets better. He eats with Poe every day, making the tiny choices that he can; he’ll have Poe pick out a meal and Finn will choose a side or a dessert. Finn picks out his clothes every morning, black pants and an orange shirt or brown pants and a white shirt or black pants and a white shirt or brown pants and an orange shirt. (He has a breakdown about this only once, and Poe is there to pick him up and choose an outfit and ask no questions.)

And then one night Finn’s trying to read the words on the paper Dr. Kalonia gave him and he just can’t do it, the words won’t come. He can’t call himself a person when he has no idea how to be one. He can’t tell himself that he matters if nothing he does ever makes a difference.

He walks the halls frantic until he finds the small suite next to the medbay and hits the entrance request button without thinking. After a minute or so, Dr. Kalonia arrives at the door in pajamas and a long ratty bathrobe. “Hey there, bigshot,” she says, graceful enough not to sound tired or annoyed. “What’s going on?”

“I can’t do it,” he blurts out, and he feels absolutely awful, he feels like he’s never been anything to anybody, like he can’t do anything right. Like he’s less consequential than the dirt beneath his feet. “I can’t be a person, I can’t. I’m _trying_ , but I can’t do it. I don’t know how. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t know how to be a person.”

“Shhh,” she whispers, and to his surprise she wraps her arms around him and pulls him into a tight embrace. “Shhh,” she says again, and after a moment Finn relaxes and buries his face in her shoulder. She smells clean and warm like laundry or a dry summer day, and he wonders if his mother was like this.

“I don’t know how to be a person,” he says again, his voice cracking. He thinks about Captain Phasma and Dr. Kalonia and Alice and the Twi’lek girl and Slip and Poe, and how they’re all people and they’re all different kinds of people and how he doesn’t know what kind he is, or how he can find his place. “I don’t know how.”

“Nobody does, bigshot,” she promises him. “We’re all just wingin’ it.”

The next morning Finn finds his slip of paper and he reads it out and he tries to sound confident. _People aren’t things. I am a person. My name is Finn. I matter._

It’s a start.


End file.
